I have been a full-time professional artist for 14 years now. I have used social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X) and this website hosted by WordPress to show my work for quite a bit longer than that.
I have never used TikTok. I gave up on Twitter/X no long after Musk bought it. It was never particularly good for the still image. Instagram used to be very good for photographers and artists.
A couple of years ago I would regularly get over 200 hundred “likes” on a post on instagram sometimes over 500. Once or twice over a post even got over a thousand likes, but no more. Now I am lucky to get 50. I have noticed that this has happened to a lot of other artists’ accounts too. This has been sapping my confidence and damaging my creativity. “What’s the point if no one sees it. No one will buy it if they dont see it”
Round the Rosses – 362 likes in 2019
My work has not deteriotated in quality. In many ways I feel that it has much improved but you’d never think that from the metrics. I appreciate that as Instagram decided to chase the Tiktok market by introducing Reels and Stories that I have resisted that change. I am not a film maker and I dont want to be one.
Lighthouse at Fort Dunree (Donegal) 833 Likes in 2022
I appreciate the beauty of a still image and silence. I never have the sound on if I can help it.
Strangely, I am okay with “Sponsored Content” as I don’t pay to be on the site and I know they have to make their money somehow. What I do have a problem is that when I log on these days my senses are assaulted by all singing and dancing stuff I never asked to see, accounts I never signed up for. The suggested content is overwelming. The infinite feed is insane. “Discover” is rarely of interest so I dont bother with it. The algorithm has bland dull taste.
Lately, I have felt sick logging on and sicker logging off. I used to find artists I liked but now I feel exhausted and used.
Rocky Ground Bun An Inver by Emma Cownie – 92 likes in 2025
All this stuff has been deliberately designed to be addictive. A court case in California earlier this year upheld the view that Meta and YouTube design addictive products that harmed young people. I haven’t noticed the platforms becoming less addictive, if anything they seem to be getting worse.
I will go on my phone to answer comments and queries and find I have got distracted looking at videos of sick or disabled cats in countries many of miles away. It makes me feel stressed. On the days when I dont log in, I feel a lot better.
Boats at Inishbofin Pier, Donegal 1340 Likes in 2022
Last month, the European Commission found Meta in breach of the Digital Services Act for the addictive design of Instagram and Facebook. The investigation focuses on features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and the platforms’ highly personalised recommender systems. Earlier this year the EU told Tiktok to change its addictive design or face a massive fine. Sadly, the UK is no longer in the EU.
I can’t wait for Meta et al to change their addictive designs so that my head no longer feel fried after I have been on their sites for a silly amount of time. So, I have decided to turn off comments and likes on my Instagram account and the “Emma Cownie landscape Artist” Facebook account that is linked to it. I will continue with comments and likes on my other Facebook account for a while longer so I can compare results.
I hope it will save my sanity. It’s just as much work to turn off the comments and like but I feel better having wrested a modicum of control back from the Tech giants.
I am off to wrap some paintings and read a sewing book.
If you want to contact me you can still DM me on these sites or email me at emmafcownie@gmail.com
We all want to be seen. I want people to see my work. I also want people to see the process behind that work (have you listened to my recent radio interview yet?) I also want to maybe inspire and/or encourage people to undertake their own creative journey. There are bumps in the road, however. Making a living in the creative industries is difficult and uncertain at the best of times.
I recently wrote about how Generative AI was scraping/stealing artists’ copyrighted without permission or recompense. Its not clear how the rise of AI will change things. It has already been disruptive for many of those in the media industry. The protective tools such as “Glaze” are only short-term fixes, if you can get them to work. But that disruption may also create opportunities for some – its hard to tell.
Many people aren’t very interested in AI but wonder why they can’t get speak to a human in customer services but only an online bot.
As an artist who sells much of their work directly, I am reliant on the internet to get my work “out there” to as many people as possible. For many years I have used social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, Pinterest in addition to my own website (with blog) as well as a mailing list. I have posted my work on a handful of online Galleries, Artfinder,in particular. To be honest, I don’t know what works.
I used to assume that everything did a bit of something. Lately its become apparent that some are doing very little indeed. A couple of years ago my instagram posts used to regularly get over a thousand likes, these days I am lucky to get over two hundred. I have pretty much given up on Twitter/X now from lack of engagement. I am wondering whether Facebook is worth the effort too. Since the arrival of TikTok in 2026, the short form video has been given priority by “the algoritim”. Not great news for camera-shy artists, like me.
What is apparent, is that social media sites are like walled gardens, where leaving is discouraged. Posts with external links are downgraded by the site and search algorithims. Facebook and Instagram are both owned by Meta. These walled gardens can and do change their rules for who get seen and who doesn’t.
A rather dated illustration of “Walled gardens”
“Enshitification” (Or – Its all going to Hell in a hardcart)
This is something that what Cory Doctorow calls the “Enshitification” of the internet. He points out that “Once upon a time, Facebook and Twitter showed you stuff from your friends and followers; now you get a torrent of things that the platform’s algorithms think might increase your “engagement”. Doctorow says “First,” he writes, “they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves.” You do this by offering “free” services (Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram), or loss-making reduced prices (Amazon). Then once you’ve got them locked in, you turn them into a captive market for your real customers – advertisers and vendors. And once you’ve got them locked in then you’re in a seller’s market – and have a licence to print money.
Twitter/X and Facebook have made it harder and hard to post and see external links to websites and publications. Many users have left the site. Opinions and comments used to be reinforced by reptutable publications. Partly as a result of this policy many online publications that people used to link to in their twitter posts have seen a big drop in traffic.
The Death of Google
The rise of AI is another threat to the stablility of online ecosystem. The death of Google has been predicted for many years now (at least since 2018). Google dominates internet search results so much that for many people it is the internet. These days, however, your Google search is likely to be swamped in link-farms, clickbait, long-form articles with thousands of words that ultimately say nothing, those weird ads about cars/fridges/hots tubs being “practically given away”. In fact, tons and tons of ads.
AI Overviews
In order to try and weed out some of the spammy stuff, Google recently introduced something called AI Overviews. maybe you have noticed it. Maybe not. The tech company unleashed a makeover of its search engine in mid-May that frequently provides AI-generated summaries on top of search results – it used to use Wikipedia for its summary with a list of links below. That was uncontroversial.
Google’s new AI Overviews saves you the effort of clicking on links by using generative AI to provide summaries of the search results. So if you want to know how to make cheese stick on your pizza – it will save you the bother of clicking on a receipe site. Google want to be the search and answer engine. However, when someone asked Google to suggest what to do if cheese is not sticking to pizza, it claimed that its AI suggested adding non-toxic glue to it! This was based on an 11-year-old comment from a forum site called Reddit that has recently done a deal to allow AI to train on content.
AI can’t tell fact from fiction, or from jokes or sarcasm. This is causing big problems for AI – a response to a advise on depression included “Jump of the Golden Gate Bridge”!
AI’s Advice on identifying edible wild mushooms was worryingly vague, emphasising looking for those with solid white flesh — which many potentially deadly puffball mimics also have. It has been said that “pharmaceutical companies aren’t allowed to release drugs that are harmful. Nor are car companies. But so far, tech companies have largely been allowed to do what they like Google is now making “more than a dozen technical improvements” to its artificial intelligence systems! It is important that Google maintains user trust. Other browsers are available. I have started to use one called Brave, there is also DuckDuckGo, Firefox and Microsoft Edge.
Google Zero – what does it mean for the artist blogger?
Google’s summaries are designed to get people authoritative answers to the information they’re looking for as quickly as possible without having to click through a ranked list of website links. This desire for Google to become a search and answer engine is called “Google Zero” by Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of the Verge Magazine.; when Google Search simply stops sending traffic outside of its search engine to third-party websites. That possibly means my website, or your blog. Independent review sites have been feeling the effects of the changes.
There’s a review website called House Fresh, who review air purifiers that they have personally tested (instead of recycling PR puff from the manufacturers). Since 2023, they have seen their reviews ripped off by bigger websites and web traffic to their own site decimated. The teething problems of Google Overview may see it being ditched by Google. They have a track record of ditching apps that were’t immediately successful – you can read a long list of them here. Remember Google Street View? Gone. Google Hangout? Not Really. Google My Business? Yes. That’s gone too.
What to do?
So whilst Google Overview maybe gone very soon, AI wont be going anywhere soon. Too much money has been spent on it. The big tech companies are desperate to keep ahead in the innovation race. They are also desperate for web-domination, regardless of the collateral damage. Yes, that maybe your amazing following on Youtube, Facebook, TikTok that gradually loses traction.
Artists may follow the latest advice to make reels, or stories (how many daft videos on Instagram reels have I seen of an artist turning around to “reveal” their latest work) and it may work for a while. All these innovations are designed to please the “algorithim”. Not the audience. Certainly not the artist. The goal posts keep moving. Once it was stories we had to make, then reels. What next? It’s exhausting. It’s a bottomless pit that sucks in a lot of your creative energy. I am an artist and I want to paint. Not perform.
The moral of the story is don’t build your house on someone else’s land. I have known this for sometime. Several years ago, Facebook unexpectedly deleted my Emma Cownie Artist page without warning. I set up a new one (two actually, one also to link to my Instagram account) but the follower numbers have never come close to the numbers or engagement of the original page. The waters closed in pretty easily.
I redoubled my efforts with my own website (with this blog) and a mailing list and my website numbers and views have steadily grown. You have to build an audience.
I looked at a blog I wrote in 2019 when I first started my mailing list and most of the suggestions I included (but not necessarily followed) still look good to me. There is a lot of cross over with my blog on this website but its not identical.
I write high-quality, carefully researched content. I write about my new work, sales and the inspiration behind my paintings i.e. the local history of the the places I paint and the process of painting – including technical stuff to do with colour, composition.
I write about the process of creativity.
I also write about the inspiration provided by other artists. I know its a cliche but I am on a “journey” but I am keen to explain what is informing that journey. Why I paint in a certain way and not another? It’s vital to keep supporters/fans engaged to maintain their relationship with you and your business. It’s all about adding value to their lives.
Apocalypse Now?
Not necessarily. So it seems that the best advice is don’t panic. Keep on keeping on and build those ladders over the walls in the walled gardens into your own garden!
